Pallid day (when nothing shines by its own light) slinks &
insinuates & suggests that we compromise with a sad &
lackluster reality. But in dream we are never ruled except
by love or sorcery, which are the skills of chaotes &
sultans.

Among a people who cannot create or play, but can only
work, artists also know no choice but
anarchy & monarchy. Like the dreamer, they must possess &
do possess their own perceptions, & for this they must
sacrifice the merely social to a "tyrannical Muse."
Art dies when treated "fairly." It must enjoy a caveman's
wildness or else have its mouth filled with gold by some
prince. Bureaucrats & sales personnel poison it, professors
chew it up, & philosophers spit it out. Art is a kind of
byzantine barbarity fit only for nobles & heathens.
If you had known the sweetness of life as a poet in the
reign of some venal, corrupt, decadent, ineffective &
ridiculous Pasha or Emir, some Qajar shah, some King Farouk,
some Queen of Persia, you would know that this is what every
anarchist must want. How they loved poems & paintings, those
dead luxurious fools, how they absorbed all roses & cool
breezes, tulips & lutes!
Hate their cruelty & caprice, yes--but at least they were
human. The bureaucrats, however, who smear the walls of the
mind with odorless filth--so kind, so gemutlich--who
pollute the inner air with numbness--they're not even worthy
of hate. They scarcely exist outside the bloodless Ideas
they serve.

And besides: the dreamer, the artist, the anarchist--do they
not share some tinge of cruel caprice with the most
outrageous of moghuls? Can genuine life occur without some
folly, some excess, some bouts of Heraclitan "strife"? We do
not rule--but we cannot & will not be ruled.

In Russia the Narodnik-Anarchists would sometimes forge a
ukase or manifesto in the name of the Czar; in it the
Autocrat would complain that greedy lords & unfeeling
officials had sealed him in his palace & cut him off from
his beloved people. He would proclaim the end of serfdom &
call on peasants & workers to rise in His Name against the
government.

Several times this ploy actually succeeded in sparking
revolts. Why? Because the single absolute ruler acts
metaphorically as a mirror for the unique and utter
absoluteness of the self. Each peasant looked into this
glassy legend & beheld his or her own freedom--an illusion,
but one that borrowed its magic from the logic of the dream.

A similar myth must have inspired the 17th century Ranters &
Antinomians & Fifth Monarchy Men who flocked to the Jacobite
standard with its erudite cabals & bloodproud conspiracies.
The radical mystics were betrayed first by Cromwell & then
by the Restoration--why not, finally, join with flippant
cavaliers & foppish counts, with Rosicrucians & Scottish
Rite Masons, to place an occult messiah on Albion's throne?

Among a people who cannot conceive human society without a
monarch, the desires of radicals may be expressed in
monarchical terms. Among a people who cannot conceive human
existence without a religion, radical desires may speak the
language of heresy.

Taoism rejected the whole of Confucian bureaucracy but
retained the image of the Emperor-Sage, who would sit silent
on his throne facing a propitious direction, doing
absolutely nothing.
In Islam the Ismailis took the idea of the Imam of the
Prophet's Household & metamorphosed it into the Imam-of-
one's-own-being, the perfected self who is beyond all Law &
rule, who is atoned with the One. And this doctrine led them
into revolt against Islam, to terror & assassination in the
name of pure esoteric self-liberation & total realization.

Classical 19th century anarchism defined itself in the
struggle against crown & church, & therefore on the waking
level it considered itself egalitarian & atheist. This
rhetoric however obscures what really happens: the "king"
becomes the "anarchist," the "priest" a "heretic." In this
strange duet of mutability the politician, the democrat, the
socialist, the rational ideologue can find no place; they
are deaf to the music & lack all sense of rhythm. Terrorist
& monarch are archetypes; these others are mere
functionaries.

Once anarch & king clutched each other's throats & waltzed a
totentanz--a splendid battle. Now, however, both are
relegated to history's trashbin--has-beens, curiosities of a
leisurely & more cultivated past. They whirl around so fast
that they seem to meld together...can they somehow have
become one thing, a Siamese twin, a Janus, a freakish unity?
"The sleep of Reason..." ah! most desirable & desirous
monsters!

Ontological Anarchy proclaims flatly, bluntly, & almost
brainlessly: yes, the two are now one. As a single entity
the anarch/king now is reborn; each of us the ruler of our
own flesh, our own creations--and as much of everything else
as we can grab & hold.

Our actions are justified by fiat & our relations are shaped
by treaties with other autarchs. We make the law for our own
domains--& the chains of the law have been broken. At
present perhaps we survive as mere Pretenders--but even so
we may seize a few instants, a few square feet of reality
over which to impose our absolute will, our royaume.
L'etat, c'est moi.

If we are bound by any ethic or morality it must be one
which we ourselves have imagined, fabulously more exalted &
more liberating than the "moralic acid" of puritans &
humanists. "Ye are as gods"--"Thou art That."

The words monarchism & mysticism are used here in part
simply pour epater those egalito-atheist anarchists who
react with pious horror to any mention of pomp or
superstition-mongering. No champagne revolutions for them!

Our brand of anti-authoritarianism, however, thrives on
baroque paradox; it favors states of consciousness, emotion
& aesthetics over all petrified ideologies & dogma; it
embraces multitudes & relishes contradictions. Ontological
Anarchy is a hobgoblin for BIG minds.
The translation of the title (& key term) of Max Stirner's
magnum opus as The Ego & Its Own has led to a subtle
misinterpretation of "individualism." The English-Latin word
ego comes freighted & weighed with freudian & protestant
baggage. A careful reading of Stirner suggests that
The Unique & His Own-ness would better reflect his
intentions, given that he never defines the ego
in opposition to libido or id, or in opposition to "soul"
or "spirit." The Unique (der Einzige) might best be
construed simply as the individual self.

Stirner commits no metaphysics, yet bestows on the Unique a
certain absoluteness. In what way then does this Einzige
differ from the Self of Advaita Vedanta? Tat tvam asi:
Thou (individual Self) art That (absolute Self).

Many believe that mysticism "dissolves the ego." Rubbish.
Only death does that (or such at least is our Sadducean
assumption). Nor does mysticism destroy the "carnal" or
"animal" self--which would also amount to suicide. What
mysticism really tries to surmount is false consciousness,
illusion, Consensus Reality, & all the failures of self that
accompany these ills. True mysticism creates a "self at
peace," a self with power. The highest task of metaphysics
(accomplished for example by Ibn Arabi, Boehme, Ramana
Maharshi) is in a sense to self-destruct, to identify
metaphysical & physical, transcendent & immanent, as ONE.
Certain radical monists have pushed this doctrine far
beyond mere pantheism or religious mysticism. An
apprehension of the immanent oneness of being inspires
certain antinomian heresies (the Ranters, the Assassins)
whom we consider our ancestors.

Stirner himself seems deaf to the possible spiritual
resonances of Individualism--& in this he belongs to the
19th century: born long after the deliquescence of
Christendom, but long before the discovery of the Orient &
of the hidden illuminist tradition in Western alchemy,
revolutionary heresy & occult activism. Stirner quite
correctly despised what he knew as "mysticism," a mere
pietistic sentimentality based on self-abnegation & world
hatred. Nietzsche nailed down the lid on "God" a few years
later. Since then, who has dared to suggest that
Individualism & mysticism might be reconciled & synthesized?

The missing ingredient in Stirner (Nietzsche comes closer)
is a working concept of nonordinary consciousness. The
realization of the unique self (or ubermensch) must
reverberate & expand like waves or spirals or music to
embrace direct experience or intuitive perception of the
uniqueness of reality itself. This realization engulfs &
erases all duality, dichotomy, & dialectic. It carries with
itself, like an electric charge, an intense & wordless sense
of value: it "divinizes" the self.

Being/consciousness/bliss (satchitananda) cannot be
dismissed as merely another Stirnerian "spook" or "wheel in
the head." It invokes no exclusively transcendent principle
for which the Einzige must sacrifice his/her own-ness. It
simply states that intense awareness of existence itself
results in "bliss"--or in less loaded language, "valuative
consciousness." The goal of the Unique after all is to
possess everything; the radical monist attains this by
identifying self with perception, like the Chinese inkbrush
painter who "becomes the bamboo," so that "it paints
itself."

Despite mysterious hints Stirner drops about a "union of
Unique-ones" & despite Nietzsche's eternal "Yea" &
exaltation of life, their Individualism seems somehow shaped
by a certain coldness toward the other. In part they
cultivated a bracing, cleansing chilliness against the warm
suffocation of 19th century sentimentality & altruism; in
part they simply despised what someone (Mencken?) called
"Homo Boobensis."

And yet, reading behind & beneath the layer of ice, we
uncover traces of a fiery doctrine--what Gaston Bachelard
might have called "a Poetics of the Other." The Einzige's
relation with the Other cannot be defined or limited by any
institution or idea. And yet clearly, however paradoxically,
the Unique depends for completeness on the Other, & cannot &
will not be realized in any bitter isolation.

The examples of "wolf children" or enfants sauvages
suggest that a human infant deprived of human company for
too long will never attain conscious humanity--will never
acquire language. The Wild Child perhaps provides a poetic
metaphor for the Unique-one--and yet simultaneously marks
the precise point where Unique & Other must meet, coalesce,
unify--or else fail to attain & possess all of which they
are capable.

The Other mirrors the Self--the Other is our witness. The
Other completes the Self--the Other gives us the key to the
perception of oneness-of-being. When we speak of being &
consciousness, we point to the Self; when we speak of bliss
we implicate the Other.

The acquisition of language falls under the sign of Eros--
all communication is essentially erotic, all relations are
erotic. Avicenna & Dante claimed that love moves the very
stars & planets in their courses--the Rg Veda & Hesiod's
Theogony both proclaim Love the first god born after
Chaos. Affections, affinities, aesthetic perceptions,
beautiful creations, conviviality--all the most precious
possessions of the Unique-one arise from the conjunction of
Self & Other in the constellation of Desire.

Here again the project begun by Individualism can be evolved
& revivified by a graft with mysticism--specifically with
tantra. As an esoteric technique divorced from orthodox
Hinduism, tantra provides a symbolic framework ("Net of
Jewels") for the identification of sexual pleasure & non-
ordinary consciousness. All antinomian sects have contained
some "tantrik" aspect, from the families of Love & Free
Brethren & Adamites of Europe to the pederast sufis of
Persia to the Taoist alchemists of China. Even classical
anarchism has enjoyed its tantrik moments: Fourier's
Phalansteries; the "Mystical Anarchism" of G. Ivanov & other
fin-de-siÉcle Russian symbolists; the incestuous erotism of
Arzibashaev's Sanine; the weird combination of Nihilism &
Kali-worship which inspired the Bengali Terrorist Party (to
which my tantrik guru Sri Kamanaransan Biswas had the honor
of belonging)...

We, however, propose a much deeper syncretism of anarchy &
tantra than any of these. In fact, we simply suggest that
Individual Anarchism & Radical Monism are to be considered
henceforth one and the same movement.

This hybrid has been called "spiritual materialism," a term
which burns up all metaphysics in the fire of oneness of
spirit & matter. We also like "Ontological Anarchy" because
it suggests that being itself remains in a state of "divine
Chaos," of all-potentiality, of continual creation.

In this flux only the jiva mukti, or "liberated
individual," is self-realized, and thus monarch or owner of
his perceptions and relations. In this ceaseless flow only
desire offers any principle of order, and thus the only
possible society (as Fourier understood) is that of lovers.

Anarchism is dead, long live anarchy! We no longer need the
baggage of revolutionary masochism or idealist self-
sacrifice--or the frigidity of Individualism with its
disdain for conviviality, of living together--or the
vulgar superstitions of 19th century atheism, scientism, and
progressism. All that dead weight! Frowsy proletarian
suitcases, heavy bourgeois steamer-trunks, boring
philosophical portmanteaux--over the side with them!

We want from these systems only their vitality, their life-
forces, daring, intransigence, anger, heedlessness--their
power, their shakti. Before we jettison the rubbish and
the carpetbags, we'll rifle the luggage for billfolds,
revolvers, jewels, drugs and other useful items--keep what
we like and trash the rest. Why not? Are we priests of a
cult, to croon over relics and mumble our martyrologies?

Monarchism too has something we want--a grace, an ease, a
pride, a superabundance. We'll take these, and dump the woes
of authority & torture in history's garbage bin. Mysticism
has something we need--"self-overcoming," exalted awareness,
reservoirs of psychic potency. These we will expropriate in
the name of our insurrection--and leave the woes of morality
& religion to rot & decompose.

As the Ranters used to say when greeting any "fellow
creature"--from king to cut-purse--"Rejoice! All is ours!"

THE KALI YUGA STILL has 200,000 or so years to play--good
news for advocates & avatars of CHAOS, bad news for
Brahmins, Yahwists, bureaucrat-gods & their runningdogs.

I knew Darjeeling hid something for me soon as I heard the
name--dorje ling--Thunderbolt City. In 1969 I arrived just
before the monsoons. Old British hill station, summer hdqrs
for Govt. of Bengal--streets in the form of winding wood
staircases, the Mall with a View of Sikkim & Mt Katchenhunga-
-Tibetan temples & refugees--beautiful yellow-porcelain
people called Lepchas (the real abo's)--Hindus, Moslems,
Nepalese & Bhutanese Buddhists, & decaying Brits who lost
their way home in '47, still running musty banks & tea-
shoppes.

Met Ganesh Baba, fat white-bearded saddhu with overly-
impeccable Oxford accent--never saw anyone smoke so much
ganja, chillam after chillam full, then we'd wander the
streets while he played ball with shrieking kids or picked
fights in the bazaar, chasing after terrified clerks with
his umbrella, then roaring with laughter.

He introduced me to Sri Kamanaransan Biswas, a tiny wispy
middleage Bengali government clerk in a shabby suit, who
offered to teach me Tantra. Mr Biswas lived in a tiny
bungalow perched on a steep pine-tree misty hillside, where
I visited him daily with pints of cheap brandy for puja &
tippling--he encouraged me to smoke while we talked, since
ganja too is sacred to Kali.

Mr Biswas in his wild youth was a member of the Bengali
Terrorist Party, which included both Kali worshippers &
heretic Moslem mystics as well as anarchists & extreme
leftists. Ganesh Baba seemed to approve of this secret past,
as if it were a sign of Mr Biswas's hidden tantrika
strength, despite his outward seedy mild appearance.

We discussed my readings in Sir John Woodruffe ("Arthur
Avalon") each afternoon, I walked there thru cold summer
fogs, Tibetan spirit-traps flapping in the soaked breeze
loomed out of the mist & cedars. We practiced the Tara-
mantra and Tara-mudra (or Yoni-mudra), and studied the Tara-
yantra diagram for magical purposes. Once we visited a
temple to the Hindu Mars (like ours, both planet & war-god)
where he bought a finger-ring made from an iron horseshoe
nail & gave it to me. More brandy & ganja.

Tara: one of the forms of Kali, very similar in attributes:
dwarfish, naked, four-armed with weapons, dancing on dead
Shiva, necklace of skulls or severed heads, tongue dripping
blood, skin a deep blue-grey the precise color of monsoon
clouds. Every day more rain--mud-slides blocking roads. My
Border Area Permit expires. Mr Biswas & I descend the slick
wet Himalayas by jeep & train down to his ancestral city,
Siliguri in the flat Bengali plains where the Ganges fingers
into a sodden viridescent delta.

We visit his wife in the hospital. Last year a flood drowned
Siliguri killing tens of thousands. Cholera broke out, the
city's a wreck, algae-stained & ruined, the hospital's halls
still caked with slime, blood, vomit, the liquids of death.
She sits silent on her bed glaring unblinking at hideous
fates. Dark side of the goddess. He gives me a colored
lithograph of Tara which miraculously floated above the
water & was saved.

That night we attend some ceremony at the local Kali-temple,
a modest half-ruined little roadside shrine--torchlight the
only illumination--chanting & drums with strange, almost
African syncopation, totally unclassical, primordial & yet
insanely complex. We drink, we smoke.
Alone in the cemetery, next to a half-burnt corpse, I'm
initiated into Tara Tantra. Next day, feverish & spaced-out,
I say farewell & set out for Assam, to the great temple of
Shakti's yoni in Gauhati, just in time for the annual
festival. Assam is forbidden territory & I have no permit.
Midnight in Gauhati I sneak off the train, back down the
tracks thru rain & mud up to my knees & total darkness,
blunder at last into the city & find a bug-ridden hotel.
Sick as a dog by this time. No sleep.

In the morning, bus up to the temple on a nearby mountain.
Huge towers, pullulating deities, courtyards, outbuildings--
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims--weird saddhus down from
their ice-caves squatting on tiger skins & chanting. Sheep &
doves are being slaughtered by the thousands, a real
hecatomb--(not another white sahib in sight)--gutters
running inch-deep in blood--curve-bladed Kali-swords chop
chop chop, dead heads plocking onto the slippery
cobblestones.

When Shiva chopped Shakti into 53 pieces & scattered them
over the whole Ganges basin, her cunt fell here. Some
friendly priests speak English & help me find the cave where
Yoni's on display. By this time I know I'm seriously sick,
but determined to finish the ritual. A herd of pilgrims (all
at least one head shorter than me) literally engulfs me like
an undertow-wave at the beach, & hurls me suspended down
suffocating winding troglodyte stairs into claustrophobic
womb-cave where I swirl nauseated & hallucinating toward a
shapeless cone meteorite smeared in centuries of ghee &
ochre. The herd parts for me, allows me to throw a garland
of jasmine over the yoni.

A week later in Kathmandu I enter the German Missionary
Hospital (for a month) with hepatitis. A small price to pay
for all that knowledge--the liver of some retired colonel
from a Kipling story!--but I know her, I know Kali. Yes
absolutely the archetype of all that horror, yet for those
who know, she becomes the generous mother. Later in a cave
in the jungle above Rishikish I meditated on Tara for
several days (with mantra, yantra, mudra, incense, &
flowers) & returned to the serenity of Darjeeling, its
beneficent visions.

Her age must contain horrors, for most of us cannot
understand her or reach beyond the necklace of skulls to the
garland of jasmine, knowing in what sense they are
the same. To go thru CHAOS, to ride it like a tiger, to
embrace it (even sexually) & absorb some of its shakti, its
life-juice--this is the Path of Kali Yuga. Creative
nihilism. For those who follow it she promises enlightenment
& even wealth, a share of her temporal power.

The sexuality & violence serve as metaphors in a poem which
acts directly on consciousness through the Image-ination--or
else in the correct circumstances they can be openly
deployed & enjoyed, embued with a sense of the holiness of
every thing from ecstasy & wine to garbage & corpses.

Those who ignore her or see her outside themselves risk
destruction. Those who worship her as ishta-devata, or
divine self, taste her Age of Iron as if it were gold,
knowing the alchemy of her presence.